Chapter 53 start the vietnam war

Since the tragic Vietnam War, a great deal has been written about the causes of war.But, frankly, despite all the absurd military justifications and mixed reactions from all sectors of society, the US defense industry and the New York financial industry are the most important factors in instigating Washington to start this war, because the military build-up will give Their interests provide a politically sound excuse.There will be a major shift in American industry, most of which will be revived by the production of munitions. In the 1960s, the center of the U.S. economy shifted increasingly toward a military economy, and the pretext of a Cold War against the communist threat was used to justify spending tens of billions of dollars.Military spending became the mainstay of New York's financial industry and the profits of the oil industry, which was an echo of the British Empire in the 19th century and put on the anti-Communist cloak of the 20th century.

The Vietnam War was deliberately orchestrated by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, Pentagon officials, and key advisers to President Lyndon Johnson.This war is doomed to be hopeless from the very beginning and can only solve the long-term development of the defense industry sector of the economy.Washington reasoned that in order to prevent the "evil invasion" of the so-called "communism" in Vietnam, American voters should be able to accept the huge cost of the war. Although the U.S. budget would increase the deficit as a result, defense factories could provide more jobs. .

According to the rules of the Bretton Woods system, Washington can inflate the dollar through a huge domestic expenditure deficit, so that it can force Europe and other trading partners to "swallow" the cost of the US war by depreciating the dollar.As long as the United States refuses to lower the dollar-to-gold exchange rate, Europe will have to accept the dollar at the price it was 20 years ago and bear the cost of the war.In fact, since 1944, the performance of the U.S. economy has deteriorated, and the ratio of the U.S. dollar to gold has been unable to reflect the true value of the U.S. dollar.

President Johnson refused to raise taxes for fear of losing votes. However, in order to support the "Great Society" plan [in the 1960s, President Johnson introduced a series of reforms to eliminate discrimination and poverty. Society" (Great Society) program. ——Translator] and the Vietnam War to raise huge funds, we can only print US dollars and issue long-term treasury bonds to make up for the lack of financial funds. In the early 1960s, the U.S. federal budget deficit averaged around $3 billion a year.As war spending skyrocketed, the deficit hit a staggering $9 billion in 1967 and a staggering $25 billion in 1968.

During this period, the European Central Bank began to accumulate large amounts of U.S. dollars as official reserves, a phenomenon known as the foreign accumulation of U.S. dollars deposited in non-U.S. banks in Europe.Ironically, in 1961 Washington demanded that European allies, Japan, and the G-10 retain their growing dollar reserves and reduce the loss of US gold reserves, rather than adjusting the dollar-to-gold ratio in accordance with the Bretton Woods system. Central banks across Europe earn interest by investing in long-term U.S. government treasury bills.The practical effect of this was that the huge US fiscal deficits created by the Vietnam War in the 1960s were actually financed with funds from the central banks of various European countries.The American futurist Herman Kahn is said to have exclaimed to one of his friends when he learned how these deficits were financed: "We have won the greatest theft in history! We have done it smarter than the British Empire There are too many." However, it is not so obvious at this time who is doing it more subtly.As we shall see shortly, the City of London is preparing to recycle these dollars abroad.

Obviously, compared with 1944 when the Bretton Woods system was drafted, the economic status of European countries such as Germany and France in 1964 was significantly different.But U.S. policy circles refused to heed the advice of Europe, especially French President Charles de Gaulle.They believed that the depreciation of the dollar would weaken the Bank of New York's "omnipotent" power in the world's capital markets.Washington has already repeated the mistakes of the United Kingdom before 1914, and the losses of the United Kingdom that year were very heavy. At first, when New York bankers were just starting to raise capital in the United States to speculate in Western Europe or Latin America, President Kennedy tried to encourage a revival of American techno-optimism through the Apollo moon landings, the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Encourage investment in new technologies. In 1962, most people in the United States still believed that a country should find its own way out of the crisis.

However, on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who was involved in investigating the case at the time, was also assassinated during the investigation.Years later it was maintained that the assassination was orchestrated by the CIA, with the help of certain members of the crime syndicate, including Carlos Marcello.Days before his assassination, President Kennedy had a conversation with retired five-star general Douglas MacArthur, and Arthur Schlesinger, a close friend and adviser to Kennedy, confirmed that Kennedy decided to change policy when he was considering withdrawing from the out of Vietnam.

The reasons for John F. Kennedy's assassination are still debated.But what is clear is that the young president was adjusting various strategic priorities in order to establish his own model of American policy.Among them, on key issues, he disagrees with the powerful financial and political interests that control the East Coast liberal establishment. In May 1961, more than two years before the deadly DeLay Plaza car parade in Dallas, President Kennedy traveled to Paris to meet with General de Gaulle.In Memoirs of Hope, de Gaulle gave a vivid personal assessment of the American president.Kennedy expressed the views of the United States to de Gaulle. The United States supported Ngo Dinh Diem's ​​autocratic rule in South Vietnam and placed the American Expeditionary Force under the cover of economic assistance to Southeast Asian countries.Kennedy told de Gaulle that it was necessary to build a bulwark against Soviet expansion into Indochina. "Instead of giving him the answer he wanted, I told the president that he had chosen the wrong path," de Gaulle wrote.

“You will find,” de Gaulle told Kennedy, “that meddling in this region will lead to endless entanglements,” de Gaulle went on to elaborate his reasons. "Kennedy listened to me," said de Gaulle, deriving his impressions: "Kennedy left Paris, and I was dealing with a man whose age and ambition aroused great hopes. It seemed to me , he fought the sky like an eagle." Back in Washington, Kennedy said in his "Report to the American People" on June 6 that he found General de Gaulle to be "a brilliant advisor to the future, and to the world he helped create." Throughout history, he is undoubtedly a well-informed leader...I can't trust this man any more."

Some powerful interests in the Anglo-American world do not seem enthusiastic about the kind of trust built between the French president and the young American president that would lead to a sweeping change in the direction of US foreign policy.Lyndon Johnson, who became president on November 22, 1963, was never accused of stoking similar hopes.As president, Johnson never dared to defy powerful Wall Street interests. The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, marked a watershed moment in American policy, evident as President Lyndon Johnson began massing troops in Vietnam.According to various unofficial sources, including Roger Hillman's, Kennedy had made up his mind to wind down CIA operations in Southeast Asia before he was killed.Some investigators pointed out that McGeorge Bundy was present at the time.

Lyndon Johnson quickly elevated Vietnam from a CIA "technical advisory" to a full-scale military conflict, pouring tens of billions of dollars and half a million troops into a self-defeating Southeast Asian war.The war has kept Wall Street's bond market extremely busy, raising funds for record amounts of U.S. Treasuries, while certain defense-related U.S. companies have reaped profits from the war in Asia.America's continued economic stagnation had worried politician Johnson, but war spending brought prosperity and the problem seemed solved.Thus, in the 1964 election, he won a major landslide victory over Republican Barry Goldwater.But the price of "victory" is very staggering.